Friday, 19 September 2014

Silvia told me that earlier in the day, every few hours "Claude" would ask her what how long it would be until we got to Kenscoff.  When she and I were walking out of the hospital with him, she had to tell him three times to slow down so that we could keep up.  His excitement was palpable, and it was a happy ride out of the heat of Tabarre and up into the fresh air of the mountains.

 

Arriving to find a home of twenty running, shouting little boys was a rude awakening, however.  Overwhelmed by the disorder, he shrank back in apprehension and pressed himself into us as if trying to disappear.  When Silvia and I took him to the clinic to get his medications organized with the nurse, he fell apart completely and melted into my lap, crying in despair.  The next day, I could see the salt marks from his tears on my black skirt.  We tried our best to distract and console him, but it was no use--his shrieks when they finally peeled him away from us were heartwrenching.

 

Later that night when the younger boys were getting ready for bed, we went back to check on him.  He was calm, but still subdued.  When his caretaker told him that it was time to bathe and put on his pajamas, he stood motionless, small head hanging and frail shoulders hunched.  I was about to move to help him start undressing when I saw another little boy already in motion.  He knelt down in front of Claude and started patiently taking off his shoes.  When he got down to the socks, he folded each one neatly and placed it inside the shoe.  When Claude got back from the shower and stood shivering in front of his bed, a second little boy arrived with a towel and gently patted Claude dry.  He then helped Claude put on his new pajamas, taking care to button each button and to straighten Claude's collar when he was done.

I stood frozen, speechless and awestruck...it was hard for me to fathom how so much compassion and humility could fit inside such small bodies.  To me, this is a testament to the fact that this is a home where love is.

Wednesday, 17 September 2014

Today I felt the most pure joy I have yet felt in Haiti.

Today our small friend who was injured in the car accident was finally discharged from the hospital and received official word that he has a place waiting for him at the home in Kenscoff.  In his short life, he has already known so much suffering--neglect from his family, HIV, tuberculosis, a serious car accident, loss of sight in one eye--but now, he will go to a safe home surrounded by beauty in the mountains.  He will have plenty of food, consistent healthcare, and an education.  And he will have hundreds of friends and a family that loves and cares for him.  Knowing that he's going to Kenscoff, today was the first day I saw him smile.

This is why we do what we do.

view from the volunteer house at Kenscoff

Friday, 12 September 2014

There is no disguise that can for long conceal love where it exists

 or simulate it where it does not. 

-Francois, duc de La Rochefoucauld

Today we went over to the Father Wasson Angels of Light (FWAL) home to hang out with the kids and I met my goddaughter for the first time.  Love at first sight.

Tuesday, 2 September 2014

I was sitting in the kitchen after lunch with my friends Claudy and Taino when frantic shouts started blaring from the two-way radio that the chauffeurs use.  I didn't realize what was being said, but Claudy froze and then leaped up with a horrified look on his face and started running to his van, yelling that there had been an accident.  A driver had lost control of his car and hit one of the vans used to transport the volunteers around the different NPH properties.  At the time of the accident, another friend was in the van riding back to the hospital with a little boy that she had been taking to get some tests for treatment of his HIV.  When I saw the van, the three dents in the windshield where their heads had broken the glass were clearly visible.  We later learned that the driver of the other vehicle was distraught because one of his children is critically ill and he was desperately searching the city for the right medication.  I feel like only in Haiti would these two vehicles collide.  

 

When I got to the hospital a short while later, I found my friend soaked in blood with her head swathed in bandages--the laceration on her forehead was severe enough that she needed plastic surgery.  The little boy also had cuts all over his face, but they were mostly superficial.  I didn't hesitate when I was asked to go with them up to the clinic in Petionville and climbed in the back of the ambulance after they pushed my friend's stretcher in.  There was no room for another stretcher, so they simply handed the little boy into the back of the rig and he laid on the bench with his head in my lap.  I didn't even have time to ask him his name until we got to the clinic.  Riding in an ambulance is never fun, but riding in one on rocky, rutted, unpaved roads through heavy traffic that follows no discernible traffic laws was pretty much the worst transport I could imagine for two people who probably already had horrendous headaches.  I did my best to hold the little boy still with one arm and to try to keep the stretcher from moving and smashing into my shins with the other.  

At the clinic, everything went fine.  My friend was mostly upset that she hadn't had the little boy wearing his seat belt (which, unfortunately, is not at all unusual in Haiti).  She had been working for three months to get him accepted into the home in Kenscoff because his mother is not able to give him the care he needs and the paperwork had finally come through earlier in the day.  But now this.  It seems like in Haiti, so often it's two steps forward, one step back.  I felt terribly for him because I kept thinking how scared he must have been--he was so small, and my friend was stretched out on the bed next to him, injured and bloody; the sole person he had was me, who he had met an hour earlier.  But he never cried or complained.  The only thing he did was take my hand, slowly pull me down onto the bed with him, and wrap my arm around his little shoulders like a blanket.  I held him until we had to leave, four hours later.

Tuesday, 2 September 2014

Yesterday was my first day working alone as a staff nurse and I survived!  It went well.  I was nervous to be on my own because aside from still adjusting to the unit and the language(s), patient loads here are much heavier than in the United States.  When I got to the hospital in the morning, I learned that I'd be working in "the box," which is the glass-walled partition where the smallest, most critical babies live.  I had five patients.  In the states, I would have had two.  I was fortunate that none of them were very sick and that I didn't have any major obstacles during the day. 

A few weeks ago, I met a man who works at the US Embassy here and his daughter, who were at mass at St. Damien one day.  His daughter, who is in college and has grown up traveling and living abroad her entire life, commented that Haiti was by far the hardest place she'd ever seen.  Then she added, "I just keep thinking that we won the genetic lottery."  I have returned to her comment more times than I can count.  Since living in Haiti, I have reflected over and over on how hard people work here.  I was nervous about making it through one single day alone in the NICU, but the other nurses here routinely work four 12-hour shifts back-to-back, two days and then two nights.  Most people work six days a week.  One of my friends works six days a week at two different jobs.  It's not unusual for the chauffeurs to work 16-hour days if the villa is busy.  And compensation for this workload can be in the neighborhood of $190 per month.  One friend has dreamed of being an engineer for ten years, but can't afford to pay for school.  Another, who is a doctor, would like to put his brother through school, but he has a year of service and a surgical residency ahead of him before he can even think about earning any money.  People here work so hard, for so little, and why?  Simply because they were born in this fractured, poverty-riddled country where opportunity and advantage are scarce.  Genetic lottery.